To make a significant change in your life and achieve whatever goals you set for yourself you must condition your mind for success.

The journey of success (and it is a journey) will be full excitement, achievement, happiness and satisfaction.

But…

The journey of success will also be full of pitfalls, obstacles, failures and challenges. And if you aren’t able to handle the failures, you’ll never reap the reward of the achievements.

Learning how to handle failures, setbacks and challenges starts with how you approach everything in your life, ESPECIALLY THE LITTLE THINGS.

Conditioning your mind for success means establishing new habits, and habits are formed with the little things you do every day.

Let me explain with a quick example…

Imagine you’ve entered into a marathon 3 months down the track, but each day you don’t train, you don’t run and you don’t work on your fitness, technique or psychology.

By the time the big day comes you won’t have the required physical or mental conditioning to win the race. Heck, you probably won’t even finish!

But if you trained every day… If you improved your performance every day... If you planned how you were going to become your very best for the big day… How do you think you’d go?

Probably a whole lot better. In fact, you might even win the race!

Achieving success in your own personal, professional or business life is the same. If you don’t work on your mindset, your focus and your ability to keep positive every day, you won’t be able to handle the difficult times when they come…

AND THEY WILL COME!

It’s easy to be focused, positive and keep moving forward when things are going to plan. The key is to be able to do the same when things are NOT going to plan.

To be able to do this requires doing certain things every single day to to condition your mind for success.

But before I share some proven techniques you can start using immediately it’s important to understand that everything comes down to building positive habits (habits which improve your life) and getting rid of negative habits (habits which hold you back from achieving your goals).

Generally, it takes 21 days to build a new habit. And although I will be giving you 5 techniques you can utilize on a daily basis to condition your mind for success, make it easy to succeed by practicing one thing at a time for 21 days, until it becomes a habit and then moving on to something else. The wonderful thing about building a habit is that you only need to do it once, and the habit will continue for life (or until you change it).

In any case, here are 5 things you can do on a daily basis to condition your mind for success:

1. WRITE OUT YOUR GOALS EVERY MORNING

By writing out goals for each part of your life as soon as you awake, you focus your mind on what you want to achieve. Your mind will be looking for ways throughout the day to move you closer to your goals with the least possible effort.

2. FOCUS ON WHAT YOU WANT

The key to your success is defining what you want (ie. writing your goals) and then focusing on the achievement of those goals. Focusing on what you want means thinking about what you want all the time, and refusing to entertain thoughts of doubt or fear.

3. ASK YOURSELF BETTER QUESTIONS

Every thought we have is a result of a question we ask ourselves. If something negative happens in our lives we automatically ask ourselves 'why me?' or 'why does this have to happen?'. By asking yourself a question you give your mind license to think of anything that answers that question. The problem lies in that your mind can choose to think of positive answers or negative answers (thinking negatively is usually much easier for most people and is how most people are conditioned).

A much better approach is to take better care with the questions you ask yourself, and ask questions where there can only be a positive answer. So that instead of asking 'why me', you can ask yourself 'what can I learn from this?' or 'what is positive about this?'. It won't be easy in the beginning, but with practice it will become easy.

4. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH POSITIVE, LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE

The quality of the people in your life will determine the quality of your life. If your friends are successful, positive people then you will be too. But if your friends are negative, doubtful people who constantly live in fear then you will become that too. By only allowing the most positive people in your life you give yourself every opportunity to succeed.

5. USE A TO-DO LIST

You should write down everything you want to achieve every day, prioritize it in order of most important to least important and focus only on completing the top task until it is complete, then the next task and so on. If something pops up during the day, insert it on the to-do list where you think it ranks in terms of importance, but don’t get distracted from completing the most important thing. You will be surprised at how fast your life moves forward by doing this every day. Click here to learn a simple method for prioritization your to-do list every day.

These are just some things you can do to condition your mind for success. There are many more which I will share in the future.

And remember, choose one thing to practice for 21 days, and once it becomes a habit, start on the next thing and so on.

There are 365 days in a year. If you take just one step every day you will achieve massive results in no time at all.

- Alex

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In this fast paced world we constantly have more and more demands placed on our time. And it seems the closer we get to our goals, the more and more things we have to get done each day.

With only so many hours in the day it is impossible to get everything done. Naturally, we want to get the little things out of the way first so that we feel like we’re achieving something.

The problem is…

The tasks that can be quickly completed are not the things which will improve our lives. Generally, the more difficult tasks (the tasks we keep putting off ‘till we get all of the little tasks out of the way) may take a full day, a week or even a month to complete.

When I first started my own business I remember having a to-do list similar to the list below:

- Check mail
- Pay phone bill
- Call John re: property
- Read ‘selling for dummies’
- Get haircut
- Get car serviced
- Etc.

My to-do list was usually much longer than this, but it gives you an idea of the tasks listed. Now in my mind I thought that getting all the ‘easy’ tasks completed meant that I was achieving something. It felt good to get things done!

Unfortunately, even though I was getting things done every day the list kept growing more and more… and I wasn’t actually achieving anything. I was just really busy.

I was driving in my car one day listening to audio education when I heard about the ABCDE method of prioritization (a time management technique).

I instantly understood the power of this technique, implemented it immediately and have tried my best to follow it every single day of my life.

THIS TECHNIQUE LITERALLY CHANGED MY LIFE.

Here is how it works…

Select your most valuable task and work on that task until it is complete. And then work on the next most valuable task…

The way that you determine your highest priority at any moment is to think about the potential consequences of doing or not doing a particular task. A task that is important is something that can have major consequences if it is done of not done.

With the ABCDE method you make a list of everything that you have to do before you begin. You then go through the list carefully and put one of these letters next to each item on the list:

A – very important. This is something that you must do, something that has SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES for either doing it or not doing it.

B – something that you should do but that is not as important as an A item. There are consequences associated with doing it or not doing it but they are only MILD CONSEQUENCES that don’t last for very long.

C – something that would be nice to do but for which there are NO CONSEQUENCES at all for your career or your success.

The rule is that you should never do a B item when there is an A item left undone. You should never do a C item when there is a B item left undone. You must be very disciplined about this.

D – an item that you delegate or outsource to someone else who can do it pretty much as well as you. Delegate everything possible to free up enough time for you to concentrate on your A activities.

E – eliminate. These are items that are such low priority that you could eliminate them completely and it would make no difference at all. Sometimes the disciplined act of eliminating low value tasks can simplify your life and free up enough time for you to accomplish those tasks that have the greatest possible consequences for you.

Once you have applied the ABCDE formula to your list, go back over the list and organise your A tasks by priority, put an A1 next to your most important task, an A2 next to your second most important task and so on. Then begin immediately on your A1 task and discipline yourself to stay at it until it is finished.

This formula alone will double your productivity.

When I heard this the first time, I re-sorted my list and focused on the most important task until it was complete – reading the book ‘selling for dummies’.

And you know what?

It was the one of the hardest thing I had to do, because it felt like I wasn’t getting anything done.

The funny thing was that I achieved more in my life as a result of focusing on that one task than anything else I have ever done.

Why?

Because the most important things we keep holding off are the very things which will make the difference between success and failure (and are usually the most difficult and ‘scariest’ tasks of all).

I urge you to start using this formula every day for at least one month and let the results speak for themselves.

I would love to hear your feedback. Simply enter your comments below.

- Alex

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Have you seen the movie ‘Coach Carter’ with Samuel L. Jackson?

It’s based on a true story about a simple guy who takes over the local high school basketball team, a bunch of troubled teenagers at one of the worst schools in the country, and helps them create a better life for themselves through basketball.

I remember seeing it at the movies when it first came out… I loved it!

If you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend watching it as soon as you can.

Anyway…

My fiancé, Nehara, was away on a team building weekend with her company last week so I watched it again with my brother George…

There was a scene from the movie where one of the students stood up and quoted a famous passage by Marianne Williamson which really moved me and which I can really appreciate. It’s something to always keep in mind to ensure a happy, satisfying and successful life.

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

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Think about it…

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